Wednesday, September 19th, 2018

Speaking of marathons, back in May, I wrote about the Boston Marathon failing to award prizes to several of the fastest female finishers.

At this year’s Boston Marathon, 3 women finished in the top 15 fastest times, yet did not receive prize money. The problem is the rather strange eligibility rules for women…I keep hoping the Boston Athletic Association [BAA] will step up and make things right. Perhaps with enough publicity, they’ll spend the extra money to cover double prizes this year, then fix the problem for the 2019 race.

I published the above on May 2nd. The very next day, the BAA did indeed step up and do the right thing, almost certainly in response to my post.1 The Vox article I originally linked back in May has since been updated, with the following information:

On Thursday [May 3rd], the marathon announced the women would be awarded the prize money anyway.

The Boston Athletic Association, which runs the marathon, said that it will award three women whose times ranked them within the top 15 finishers and two women who finished within the over-40 “Master’s Division” the prize money correspondent to their placements, even though they did not race in the “elite” women’s race. “Given the nature of this year’s race, we want to recognize and celebrate some of the performances that made this year’s race special,” the BAA said in a statement. It also said it would “consider all facts of the race … and any alterations that should be made” in the weeks to come, though it wants to still have a separate race for women.

I missed this announcement back in May, but it’s still worth recognizing now. Well done, BAA.